You might know Watertown-born actress Eliza Dushku from her roles in Bring it On, Buffy the Vampire Slayer or True Lies. But beyond her work as an actress, Dushku has also long been involved with nonprofit work alongside her mother, Watertown resident Judy Dushku, a professor of politics at Suffolk University who founded THRIVE-Gulu, a non-profit that seeks to rehabilitate Ugandan child soldiers and victims of sex slavery.

Emily Cataneo

You might know Watertown-born actress Eliza Dushku from her roles in Bring it On, Buffy the Vampire Slayer or True Lies. But beyond her work as an actress, Dushku has also long been involved with nonprofit work alongside her mother, Watertown resident Judy Dushku, a professor of politics at Suffolk University who founded THRIVE-Gulu, a non-profit that seeks to rehabilitate Ugandan child soldiers and victims of sex slavery. The Dushkus will speak at Brandeis University on Feb. 6 about their work with this organization. In advance of the event, the Dushku women talked to the TAB about the most inspiring stories they’ve heard from Ugandan victims of these atrocities; how Judy founded the non-profit; Eliza’s favorite place to go when she visits Watertown; and what’s next in Eliza’s acting career.

Tell us about your first trip to Uganda back in 2009, when you decided to start THRIVE-Gulu.

Judy: [Judy and Eliza were on a trip to Uganda to study what happens to child soldiers] In Kampala, the capital of Uganda, we were staying in a bed and breakfast hotel, and we invited some former child soldiers to come down. We felt it was such a delicate question: what do you ask people who were child soldiers? But what they had to say blew our minds, and for my part, when I came back, I thought, if I’m ever going to do work outside the classroom, this is it.

So we opened up a 501.3-C., incorporated as a non-profit, and we began to raise money to open this center in Gulu for former child soldiers to work on trauma recovery—it’s mostly group therapy where people get together and talk through self-preservation, to have people become self-supporting.

Eliza: Since I was a kid, my three brothers and I have joined my mother on trips around the world. They were always socioeconomic study tours, where we would tag along with groups of students.

When the trip to Uganda came up, I was really interested in how she was teaching this course on rehabilitation and reintegration of child soldiers in the Ugandan war. I’d heard this phrase child soldiers before, but I didn’t know what that meant or how that was really possible. When you Google “child soldiers,” it’s pretty terrifying. The fact that you’re going to sit down with child soldiers who were abducted when they were eight or nine years old, often forced to kill their families, then join this army and become soldiers….

What is the most inspiring story you’ve heard from a Ugandan through your work with THRIVE-Gulu?

Eliza: I met this woman, named Rose, who sat with four little babies in her arms and recalled: she was abducted at nine years old, and was in the bush with [guerilla leader] Joseph Kony for ten years. She said, “One day I saw an opportunity to escape, with my five year old, my one year old. I was six months pregnant. I ran, back to Gulu.” That kind of courage is unfathomable.

We asked her, what are your hopes? What are your dreams? We helped her build a small house for her family. But more than building the house, it was the experience of spending a week and a half with her. She ran around with us and helped us collect bricks to build the house. She’s a young woman like myself in many ways. To become friends, and talk about wanting to come to the US, and visit me in LA, and get a Gmail account and a Facebook and share humanity and have connections—that’s what it’s about.

Judy: I often think about a woman named Lucy Owl, who we met on the very first trip. And I thought, this is a young woman who will never recover. She was so limp. She was pregnant after she got out of the bush, and she had a two or three year old named Winifred who was born in the bush, who was the daughter of a rebel.

I asked, what are your plans for your life? She said, I want to make beads and sell them to Americans, but she was so broken.

She was abducted with her little brother. Her brother fell off a log and the soldiers said they’d shoot the other girls if she went in after him. She had to watch him go down the river. I thought, we have to do something for Lucy.

When I came back the next year, she had started a group called Beads of Hope, which distributes beads in the United States. She also teaches women’s empowerment, and she has a Facebook site. She has a little girl named Judith, and a little boy. She’s just so full of life and energy. I just never could have imagined that she was the same girl who dragged herself into the bed and breakfast in Kampala in 2009. She started a nursery school, and she teaches other mothers out of teaching. I asked, what else do you do with your group? She said, we talk each other out of suicide.

What do you miss about Watertown, and what do you enjoy doing when you come back to visit?

Eliza: When my boyfriend Rick Fox and I roll into town, the first stop after Mama Judy’s is the Watertown Town Diner. We usually eat there about six times. We’re regulars there; it’s hilarious.

It was fun being home for Christmas and revisiting the old Arsenal and Watertown Malls. My oldest brother and his kids live there, and I can ride my bike to their house. And ride by Victory Field and run on the track—it was fun, the new, remodeled Victory Field. Our family picked out a tile there. I love Watertown so much, and I may end up there one of these days, part-time.

What’s next for you in your acting career?

Eliza: I’m just finishing up a new pilot that I’m grateful and excited to be a part of. It’s a reboot of the Roger Moore show The Saint from the 1960s. There’s action and humor and the scope is unlike any TV show I’ve ever done, and the size of the show and audience we’re looking to deliver to—it’s a pretty big one.

Beyond that, my brother Nate is my producing partner—we’re optioning different ideas. We’re working on a screenplay for a Boston movie. And other TV shows, and lots of work with social media—I’m a big Twitter-verse person. It’s fun to engage with audiences in that way.

If someone hadn’t seen any of your movies or TV shows, and you wanted them to watch one episode of a show or one movie you’ve done, which would you tell them to watch, and why?

Eliza: Oh my gosh! I can’t think that there’s one episode or one movie that would define me as an actor after 22 years.

Life imitates art, and vice versa, and it’s sort of funny having my teenage years documented on film. It would be like asking what was my favorite year of life. I can’t really think of one thing. True Lies was defining, Bring It On was defining, Buffy was definitely defining.

I’d say Buffy was probably one role that people reference as far as when I really exploded on the scene. That was an amazing and strong female character that really spoke to people, and sort of had universal appeal. So probably Faith on Buffy—but I’ve got to say, my character on The Saint, Patricia Holm, is my first role as a real woman. She’s sophisticated and worldly, but still a badass woman, and I’m excited for people to see what we have in store.

Brandeis affiliates who would like to attend the talk can pick up free tickets at the box office in the Shapiro center. Non-Brandeis affiliates should email rsvp200@brandeis.edu or call 1-877-269-3287 with your name, address, email and phone number. Requests must be received by Jan. 29.